Innovation design. From design to systems design: objects, relations and behaviour

For many years the word innovation was associated with frantic research in the field of materials and technologies; in the key projects of many companies it often still is. Today, innovation is a multiform force that has to continually redefine itself and its methods. The challenge it has to face is to design all the infrastructures we use in our daily lives while respecting planet earth because this has an enormous and important economic and functional impact on the community at large. We need to rethink several principles of innovation and “good design” such as functionality, culture, production techniques and symbolism; we need to ensure that design ethics are more tuned to quality of life and human artefacts as part of a complex and sentient ecosystem.